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When
God created man He made us living souls (Ge 2:7; 1 Co 15:45). Man has a body and a soul that are mortal – just
like animals. Since we know Adam died the
very day he ate the forbidden fruit and lost access to the tree of life (Ge 2:17), and we know Adam did not
“die spiritually” (as is commonly assumed) because spirit beings cannot die (cp. He
1:7 and Lk 20:36), and we know Adam continued as
a living soul long after he was booted from the garden, there is only one
conclusion to which we can come when wondering how Adam died the day he ate the
forbidden fruit: Adam became mortal,
temporary, limited in and to time. The “Adam died spiritually” tradition is
unscriptural because there is no such thing as spiritual death – the only way
spirit beings can die is to enter the lake of fire and live there forever. The
other common explanation for how Adam died that day is to say he experienced
“separation from God”, which says nothing and is used as filler by those who
don’t realize the way God cursed Adam that day was by making his body mortal.
Yes, when
Adam’s physical body was denied the tree of life it became mortal/dead,
and that is why the Bible says humans who are mortal, are dead in God’s
eyes – even while still walking around and breathing! This conclusion is
confirmed by believing the following verses: THE DEAD: Mt 8:22; 22:32; Jn 5:25; Ro 8:10;
6:13; 1 Co 15:45; Ep 2:1; 5:8,14;
2 Ti 4:1; Ja 2:26; 1 Pe
4:5,6.
OK, so we are mortal, or “dead.” What of it?
Well, 1 Co 15:50 says
flesh-and-blood mortals cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (KOG). Jn 3 says
mortals cannot see or enter the KOG. That’s the problem with mortality, that’s
why it’s a curse, and that’s how mortality separates us from God. Notice both 1
Co 15 and Jn 3 contrast the physical (mortal) body
with the spiritual (immortal) body. While 1
Co 15:45 refers to Adam – by whom death (mortality) passed to all men – as
a living soul, Christ is called a
quickening (life-giving) spirit. Mortality
is a curse simply because it is limited in and to time. Spirit beings on the
other hand are immortal and are not limited in or to time. Therefore when the
Bible says mortals cannot enter the KOG it is simply because they are not qualified to enter an immortal,
eternal realm.
In order to enter the
KOG this mortal must put on immortality; we must be quickened by Christ via the
new birth, which gives mortals a spirit body with everlasting life because
spirits cannot die (He 1:7; Lk 20:36). The spirit body
you acquire at the new birth is spirit, not flesh (Jn 3:6). Now the KOG
(remember, God is a Spirit) has come unto you because you have received life
from the Spirit in the form of a spirit body. You now have become a son of God
with a heavenly body, not just a son of Adam with an earthly body. You may now
call God your Father. Call no man on earth your father
because none of them gave you life;
all they gave you was a dead body headed for the grave! You now have been saved.
From what? From the curse of mortality/death, which was put on Adam and passed to all men. Mortality is a
curse because it keeps you out of God’s immortal kingdom. But
now that you are saved from the curse of mortality you begin your Christian
walk as an immortal – you have everlasting life and can never lose it because
spirits cannot die (Lk 20:36).
Many people vaguely suppose the soul is an
immortal entity because tradition has taught them to ignore the Bible when it
says, “the soul that sinneth it shall die.”
The soul is merely an intellect – it is who you are. The head is a type of the
soul because the head also needs a body in order to survive. The soul must have
a body in order to live and function. And there are two types of bodies
available, the natural body and the spiritual body (1 Co 15:44). (The
soul itself is not a body. You’ll want to review all of 1 Co 15:35-57. It is an excellent treatise on the two types of
bodies we souls have available to carry us around.) If the soul is in the
natural (mortal) body, that soul will die when the body dies unless one of two
things happens:
One, if the person gains access to the tree of
life the natural body will live as long as the tree is available. And the soul
will live as long as the body lives. However, as Adam and Eve found out, access
to the tree of life can be denied.
Two, if the person
obtains a spiritual body from God, he – the soul – will never die even if the
natural body dies.
To recap: The purpose of the body, whether it be spirit or natural, is to house and serve the soul; the
body is the servant of the soul, the servant of the intellect. If a person is not saved, and is therefore only body and soul, the soul will die –
it will cease to exist – when the mortal body dies, just as with animals that
are also body and soul (cp. Jb 12:10; Re 8:9;
16:3; Ec 3:18-20; Ps 49:12,20). But if a person is saved, and is therefore body, soul, and spirit, the soul will not die when
the natural body does because the spirit body cannot die. Christians have two bodies, the old man (the physical, mortal
body of death), and the new man (the spiritual, immortal body of life).
Now let’s review some Scripture that can be
confusing when looking into body, soul, and spirit: Mt 10:28 and Lk 12:4,5. First, check both contexts to verify that both
passages are not spoken to the unsaved who have but
one body and a soul, but to Christians who have two bodies and a soul. In Mt 10
we see that a Christian’s (natural) body can be killed, but not his soul
(because the spirit body lives on). And it goes on to say God can send the
Christian’s surviving soul and (spirit) body to hell – which is a
warning/threat from God to His born-again followers. Two questions arise about
this passage in an effort to defend today’s doctrinal misunderstandings about
the theory of eternal security, about the “immortality” of unregenerate
souls, and about the timing of the new birth (when saints actually get their
spirit bodies).
The first question arises because the verse uses
the word body twice. Since the verse
contains neither of my parenthetical adjectives, does the verse support the
tradition that unsaved people
shouldn’t fear mere men who can (only) kill the (natural) body, but (since men
can’t kill the “immortal” soul) the unsaved should
fear God who can throw both body and soul into hell? In other words, aren’t all humans, lost and saved, born with
immortal souls because everyone is
born as body, soul, and spirit?
The answer is No. We must no longer allow
tradition to cause us to ignore the two
bodies in this verse. One body is obviously mortal and is the one that
ends up rotting in the grave, but from whence came the spirit body that, along
with the soul, gets thrown into hell? Have we forgotten to apply the
Scriptures – such as 1 Co 15 and Jn 3? They tell us
the first body is the natural one we
got from Adam’s curse – that which is born of the flesh is (not surprisingly) flesh.
That first body is easy to identify in Mt 10:28; it’s the dead and rotting one.
But according to the verse, once the mortal body is dead there are two
entities remaining. One of them is that to which tradition would have you
devote your exclusive attention – the soul. But that solves nothing, so we need
to focus on the other item – the second body. The Scriptures tell us the second
body is the supernatural one, and we get it from the Lord when we are quickened
by Him. And the Scriptures tell us when we are born of our earthly parents we
are born flesh because we don’t get a spirit body from a fleshy womb. In
order to get a spirit body you must be born again in Christ. Without Christ you
will not be born again, will not get the second body, will not get everlasting
life, and (not surprisingly) will not be qualified to see or enter heaven or
hell because you have no life in you because you are the walking dead! This
mortal must put on immortality in order to go to the immortal realm of hell.
Both the context of Mt 10:28 and its reference to the second (immortal) body
indicate it is spoken to and about Christians. And the presence of the second
(spirit) body makes it absolutely impossible for the verse to be applied to the
unsaved. Those who ignore this verse’s second body are trying to force unsaved
humans into an angels’ hell (Mt 25:41).
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Do you want more assurance that there are in
fact two bodies being referred to?
For that, compare Mt 10:28 with the word “after” in Lk
12:5. After the first body is killed
the second body can go to hell. Obviously, as we have reviewed in Jn 3 and 1 Co 15, the second body can only be gotten from
Christ when a person is born again. And since hell is in the eternal realm, the
“spirit world”, and since no mortal can see or enter that realm except he be
born again, the unsaved couldn’t go to hell – or even get a glimpse of
it (Jn 3:3) – if they wanted to.
The lesson of He 7:16,17 (covered on page D5-1) can also
be applied here in order to help debunk the theory that the soul is immortal.
How? By applying the “everlastingness” of hell. Since
hell is everlasting, only people with everlasting life can go there. Of course,
traditionalists say, that’s how we know the soul is immortal. Nice try, but
notice again tradition’s necessity to ignore the body. Even if Mt 10:28
and Lk 12:5 are used to show the immortality of the soul,
these two verses show that it’s not just
the soul that goes to hell; the second body goes with it! At best,
therefore, these verses could be used to show the immortality of the Christian
soul, which is still contrary to the unscriptural theory of the immortality
of all human souls. The theory says those unsaved people (who have not received
the second body via the second birth) leave their first and only body in the
grave when they die and then their soul goes alone to hell. But these verses
we’ve examined show that the second body – and therefore the second birth – is
a requirement because you don’t go to
hell without it! Without the second birth there can be no second body. And
without the second body there can be no second death. These verses teach us to
never ignore the body, habeas
corpus. After a Christian’s first body dies his second body goes to heaven or hell.
The second question or challenge about these
verses concerns the use of the word “destroy” in Mt 10:28. The word “destroy”,
the reasoning goes, shows that these verses apply to
the unsaved because Christians, who have spirit bodies and therefore
everlasting life, cannot be “destroyed.”
Answer: I admit I don’t particularly like the
word “destroy” here. But that is only because I have a tendency to look at
things from my Natural, carnal perspective instead of from God’s perspective.
You see, when dealing with everlasting
punishment we are trying to grasp the eternal realm – something radically
different from our natural, physical, mortal KOH surroundings and perspective.
For example, not only do I not particularly like the word “destroy” here, I
also don’t particularly like the fact that being cast into the lake of fire is
called the second “death.” “Death” and “destroy” to my way of thinking tend
to lend support to the JW’s doctrine that there really is no hell – just
“death”, “destruction”, or the “grave”, which would mean there is no everlasting torment. But we need
to look at this from God’s perspective – something that is too much of a rarity
in this Age of Reason. By taking the Bible seriously and piecing together the
clues, it becomes evident that the second death
means living forever in torment.
That is what real death is. Real death is not dying in an automobile
accident. Real death is living in the lake of fire; something from which there
is no resurrection, no escape, no relief, and no end. Talk about destruction – that’s it; you’re gone!
Permanently!
So
Scripturally that is the way I look at “destroy” in Mt
10:28. And in that way the Bible rebukes me for letting my carnal mind do the
thinking and teaches me to filter all my thoughts through the governing words
of God so that, under His guiding authority, I may more and more develop the
mind of Christ. Anyway, death and destruction are different in the physical and
spiritual realms because death and destruction as we know them in this physical realm do not exist in the spiritual realm. That is because the spiritual
realm is in eternity where there is no death and no ending. And conversely, the
death that exists in eternity – which is living forever in torment – doesn’t
exist in our world where nothing is forever. At any rate, God uses “destroy”
and “torment” as synonyms (Mt
8:29; Mk 1:24; 5:7; Lk 4:34; and compare the info in three more verses:
1 Co 15:25b death is
“destroyed”; Re 20:14 death
is cast into the “lake of fire/the second death”; Re 20:10 those in the lake of fire are “tormented for ever”). Following His lead, therefore, we must accept destroy and torment as synonyms.
Mt 10:28 is thought-provoking in the same way Jn 3:10 is. In the former, Christ casually
mentions to Old Testament saints the second body that goes with the soul to
hell. Christ apparently didn’t think He needed to give them a 1 Corinthians 15
dissertation on the two bodies and from whom/Whom they come because He expected
Old Testament saints to already know about being born of the Holy Spirit
and the second body that comes from it. That is why in John 3 when Nicodemus
had trouble following Christ’s talk about the difference between being born of
the Spirit and being born of the flesh, Christ rebuked him by pointing out that
a master of Israel should already understand the new birth in Jn 3 and the second body in Mt 10:28. Also notice that Mt
10:28 is perfectly complemented by 1 Pe 3:19,
which refers to the Old Testament saints’ second – spirit – bodies in hell. Mt 10:28 and 1 Pe 3:19 show that the Old
Testament saints really did have two bodies and that the second one was the
spirit body. And they show that, while we may disagree about the exact
time when the new birth makes saints spirits rather than mortals by giving them
spirit bodies, we must agree it happens before the mortal body hits the grave
because no soul goes anywhere without the new birth’s spirit body.
We can understand Nicodemus’ confusion: Even
today many Christian dissemblers and eternal security advocates think Christ
was wrong to say there is a second body that accompanies the soul to hell. They
“correct” Christ by claiming the soul goes alone to hell because their
doctrines are contradicted by the accompanying second (spirit) body.
Dissemblers reject the Old Testament saints’ spirit bodies because they are
just as guilty of dissembling and dissimulation as were Peter and Barnabas in Ga 2:11-14. Dissembling in the
Bible is feigning a doctrinal difference between God’s Old Testament saints and
His New Testament saints, and dissimulation means to conceal our
true doctrinal unity in Christ (Ga
3:24,28,29) by pointing to irrelevant differences in outward appearances
between Jews and Gentiles. Because these dissemblers today reject Christ’s
teaching about the second body in Mt 10:28 and 1 Pe
3:19, they love the fact that Ishmael (Abraham’s firstborn son who was unsaved)
was merely born after the flesh, but they hate and reject the fact that
Isaac (Abe’s second son who was a Christian) was born after the Spirit (Ga 4:22,23,28,29). Why do they dissemble?
Because, among other things, they do not understand the fact that all
Old and New Testament saints are priests (Ex 19:6; 1 Pe
2:5,9), and we are all under the same
High Priest, Christ Jesus (He 5:5,10). The fact that God ordained but
one High Priest, Christ, over His house (He 10:21) shows there is but one
priesthood – no matter what dissemblers claim. We are Christians because
we are priests serving our High Priest, Christ. And Old Testament saints
are Christians because they, too, are priests serving the same High
Priest we are. (If you need to review some of the verses showing the Old
Testament saints were Spirit-born followers of the same Christ we are, consult
the list of verses on pages D8-2,3.) The Bible reveals
but one God, one High Priest, one priesthood, one
religion, one salvation, one church, and one body of believers against whom
Satan is trying to prevail in his unholy ideological war.
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Some Christians think the fact that the
twinkling-of-an-eye/last-trumpet change we undergo (1 Co 15:49,51,52) is
future proves God’s born-of-the-Spirit children do not yet have spirit
bodies – that we have only the natural, physical, mortal body we got from Adam.
However, the Bible nowhere says the “seventh trumpet” (Re 11:15) is the
same as the “last trumpet.” Therefore, the last trump may not sound until the
very end of the millennial reign, which is simultaneously the beginning of the
8th day, which is the day the Bible says we get our new
circumcised/glorified bodies. And using 1 Co 15 as a proof that we don’t have
spirit bodies ignores the fact that the spirit body we have now is apparently
different from our glorified/circumcised body, which we don’t get until
after Judgment. For example, the resurrected saints of Mt 27:52,53 apparently did not have glorified bodies because
their graves had to be opened so they could get out of them. But the
resurrected Christ rose before His tomb was opened (D33) and also passed
through closed doors (Jn 20:19,26). Therefore, His body wasn’t just a physical
body, and it wasn’t just a spirit body (Lk
24:39); it was different: It was a glorified body, which is typified now by
us earthly saints being espoused to our Spirit God/Husband, and typified by the
future reuniting of the physical Kingdom of Heaven and the spiritual Kingdom of
God. The glorified body is a perfect blending/marriage of the physical and the
spiritual. Only when we get our glorified bodies will we no longer have the
uncircumcised hearts of Je 17:9, and no longer have the internal bodily
warfare between the physical and the spiritual (Ro 7:15-25). And, again,
when does the Bible say we get circumcised? On the 8th
day. Not today, and not the 7th day. But I don’t make a big
deal about things like this that do not affect our Christian walk. I say again:
I don’t get dogmatic and huffy about trivia that doesn’t affect our Christian
walk.
The two bodies we now have, mortal and spirit,
are apparently identical in appearance because Christians, thinking Peter’s
natural body was still in prison (because they had no faith in their own prayers),
assumed it was Peter’s spirit body at the door (Ac 12:15). And a Christian himself can’t even tell which body he’s
in (2 Co 12:2-4). But in this case,
by applying what we’ve learned in this lesson from Scriptures such as Jn 3:3,5; Re 4:1,2; 21:10; 1 Co
15:50, we know that, even though he couldn’t tell the difference, Paul had
to have been in his quickened body.
These verses strongly suggest the new birth gives us a spirit body long before
our mortal body dies, and these verses help us understand the difference
between the quick and the dead.